Folio: Top Women in Media – Rising Stars

Folio:'s annual Top Women in Media Awards were created to celebrate, inspire and bring together the women who make magazine media such a dynamic industry. Each of our honorees have made a lasting impact on their brands, organizations and markets, carving out leadership roles that keep our industry moving forward.

These rising stars are the women who are driving innovation at their companies and who will likely be considered the future leaders of our industry. The honorees are…

Axie Navas
Online Associate Managing Editor
Outside

Axie Navas has been with Outside for one year but has quickly become the backbone of its website. Navas’ drive and strategic thinking have overcome years of stasis to transform the gear channel into a vibrant part of the site that expands gear coverage well beyond the simple product reviews. Simply put, she is changing the way the industry writes about gear.

The data is clear. Over the course of the year, she has increased traffic to Web-exclusive gear stories by over 5,000 percent (and the gear channel was already one of the strongest site sections). Along the way, she has launched new products (three new online gear columns), crafted an online gift guide that saw record-breaking traffic, and even launched a new winter sports channel on the site. She’s also led a redesign of the gear channel page and has created a pipeline of long-form gear reviews.

To grow the gear channel, Navas spearheaded a cross-platform rethink from traffic, editorial and revenue perspectives. As part of her initiative, Outside has combined its print and online gear teams to increase coverage and share resources between platforms. This integration is becoming a model for the rest of the company. But without Navas’ leadership, collaboration would not have been identified as a key company priority.

Navas’ impact has also reached well beyond gear—and Outside. Other sites have quickly copied the more expansive approach to gear coverage, proving that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.